Lynch Could Be Home in Two Weeks, Family Says

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Former POW Jessica Lynch (search) is expected to be out of the hospital and back home in West Virginia by the end of the month, a family spokesman said Friday.

Family spokesman Randy Coleman said doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (search) in Washington, D.C., said Lynch could be released in two weeks.

Doctors still need to do some tests as part of the discharge process before a release date is set, but Lynch is progressing, hospital spokeswoman Beverly Chidel said.

"Early on, there was a lot of pain," Chidel said. "Now she's looking better, she's upbeat and she's very talkative. She participates with her treatments and wants to do more."

Lynch's 507th Maintenance Company (search) convoy was ambushed March 23 near the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. Eleven soldiers from the convoy, including two from the 3rd Forward Support Battalion, were killed. Five others were captured and held apart from Lynch for three weeks before their release.

Lynch, a 20-year-old Army supply clerk, received multiple broken bones and other injuries after her Humvee utility vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during the ambush and crashed into another vehicle. She was in an Iraqi hospital in Nasiriyah where she was rescued by special forces on April 1.

The rescue, videotaped by troops, made an American hero out of the petite blonde from rural West Virginia who joined the Army to get an education and become a teacher.

Volunteers have worked since April remodeling the family home in Palestine, about 70 miles north of Charleston.

Lew Peck, a Wirt County deputy sheriff, took several weeks off work to oversee construction, said the house should be finished in time for Lynch's return.